Rachael Blackmore's best rides at Cheltenham from years gone by

irishracing.com news
Cheltenham Honeysuckle and Rachael Blackmore won the Unibet Champion Hurdle Challenge Trophy
© Photo Healy Racing
Heading into the Cheltenham Festival in 2025 there have been 16 different female jockeys win races at the 'Greatest Show on Turf'.
As recently as 2018 Lizzie Kelly became the first female professional rider to score, before Rachael Blackmore then changed the game in 2021 by winning six races at The Festival and being crowned leading rider that year.
Of the 44 Cheltenham Festival wins by female riders, Blackmore has an incredible 16, with Nina Carberry next best on seven.
Here we recall a famous five winning rides from the Queen of the Cotswolds.
A Plus Tard: Close Brothers Novices' Handicap Chase (2019)
The first for Blackmore was truly special as A Plus Tard - more on him below - turned a competitive renewal of the Close Brothers Novices' Handicap Chase into a one-horse race.
The Cheveley Park Stud inmate was always handily placed under Blackmore and went forward after the third last to take matters up, as market rival Tower Bridge was beginning to feel the pinch.
A Plus Tard streaked clear, winning by a massive 16-lengths at the line to put Blackmore on the scoresheet.
Three days later she partnered 50/1 chance Minella Indo to glory in the Albert Bartlett Novices' Hurdle, both winners for Henry de Bromhead, and what an impact those horses would have on her career and, indeed, the Cheltenham Festival.
Honeysuckle: Champion Hurdle (2021 & 2022)
Two for the price of one, with Honeysuckle bagging successive Champion Hurdle wins in 2021 and 2022, the first and only mare to achieve such a feat.
She had won a Mares' Hurdle in 2020 and stormed home to defeat reigning champion Epatante (third) in 2021, but that was behind closed doors.
A year later, with the packed grandstands roaring them home, Blackmore and Honeysuckle did it again, with three-and-a-half-lengths to spare on Epatante this time as horse and rider savoured the adulation of the Cheltenham hordes.
A Plus Tard: Gold Cup (2022)
Though she was crowned leading rider at The Festival in 2021, it wasn't a perfect week for Blackmore.
She had the choice between the de Bromhead contenders A Plus Tard and Minella Indo in the Gold Cup, both of whom she had tasted Festival success on before, and she sided with the former.
Blackmore was outgunned after meeting some trouble in the run and it was Jack Kennedy and Minella Indo who landed the Blue Riband.
A year later, having partnered both horses through the 2020/21 season, she stuck with A Plus Tard and this time it was a different outcome.
Blackmore won enormous praise for her patience in the race, biding her time and only going by Minella Indo after the last obstacle as her mount charged home and won by 15 lengths, giving her the Holy Grail of Cheltenham wins.
Captain Guinness: Queen Mother Champion Chase (2024)
The four Championship races at Cheltenham stand tall over all the others and Blackmore is now three quarters of the way to having them all on her CV after Captain Guinness won an attritional renewal of the Queen Mother Champion Chase in 2024.
Jonbon was an 11th-hour absentee and long odds-on favourite El Fabiolo was pulled up before midway.
Edwardstone was toiling when he fell two out and it left Captain Guinness and Gentleman De Mee to scrap it out, with Blackmore's partner travelling best and holding off the Willie Mullins/Mark Walsh contender by a length-and-a-half for a satisfying success.
Honeysuckle: Mares' Hurdle (2023)
Honeysuckle will forever be indelibly linked to Blackmore's career and so this feels like a fitting end, just as it was the fitting final farewell for one of the great race mares and much-loved performers.
With the long shadow of Constitution Hill in the 2023 Champion Hurdle, owner Kenny Alexander and trainer De Bromhead figured that a third win in that race was beyond 'Honey' after she was denied by State Man in the Irish version at the Dublin Racing Festival in February.
Immediate retirement was considered but, instead, another crack at the Mares' Hurdle was the call. She delivered in style, overhauling Love Envoi up the Cheltenham hill to sign off with a 4-4 winning record at this great meeting.
With the De Bromhead family struck by a desperate tragedy mere months before in the passing of Henry's son, Jack, the emotional scenes in the winners' enclosure after Honeysuckle's win in '23 aren't likely to be forgotten any time soon.